Peripety
by DramaDramaDrama
Summary: "Heidi, a sickly pale girl of perhaps fifteen years, stands at the edge of the street, protected by the shadows. Her boyish body is barely covered by the dirty piece of yellow clothing that once was a dress." This is the story of the Volturi guard Heidi, or at least my interpretation of it. Rated M for violence, I suppose.


Heidi, a sickly pale girl of perhaps fifteen years, stands at the edge of the street, protected by the shadows. Her boyish body is barely covered by the dirty piece of yellow clothing that once was a dress. She is cold, almost freezingly so. But she does not complain. She makes no sound.

Heidi knows what will happen to her if her owner notices that she is deliberately hiding from costumers. Heidi also knows what will happen to her if she steps out of the security of the darkness, and of that, she is even more afraid.

All around her, the whores cry out into the night, hoping to coax in a customer or two. Whores like her.

Heidi instinctively closes her eyes and escapes further into the shadows, not caring for her owner's anger. Trying to imagine being in another place, any other, as long as it is not this one.

Like every other night she can remember, she does not succeed.

From one second to another, the skies open up and rain pours down in great quantities. Heidi is soaked within the course of a few seconds. She does not move. Her owner's words echo in her ears.

Don't you dare come back before the sun comes up.

She cries silently. The tears vanish in the sea of rain water, and Heidi feels ridiculously insignificant.

**.oOXOo.**

When Heidi returns to her owner in the morning, he is furious.

"What do you mean, nobody wanted you?" The old man yells. His hair is greasy and on the turning point from blond to gray, and his breath reeks of foul eggs and bad meat. "You filthy lying whore! Where is my money?"

But Heidi has no money. Just like the night before, and the night before that, and all the nights before that that she can remember, except of that one, first night. That terrifying, sickening, painful first night. Heidi shudders at the memory.

Heidi's owner is no good man, and he certainly is not forgiving. He hits her until she bleeds and he realizes that he is decreasing her worth. Finally he stops and sends her to bed.

Heidi wakes up from a nightmare only several hours later. It is still nighttime, but she doesn't fall asleep again. She is much too frightened of her own thoughts and fears to do that.

She stares at a crack in the ceiling until the sun goes down and she is awoken.

**.oOXOo.**

The following night, Heidi is still cold. She does not know wether it is the drop in temperature or the hunger taking its toll, but she feels as if she was dead and she wishes the unwanted feeling would go away.

She doesn't tell her owner. Heidi knows what happens to whores that aren't worth keeping, and she knows she is already dangerously close to it happening to herself. A sickness is the last thing she needs.

Heidi looks down at herself. Her skin is unnaturally white from not seeing the sun, and purple spots adorn her body where her owner hit her. When she lifts up what is left of her dress, she can see and touch her own ribs.

The door to her room opens. Antonius, the owner's son, enters.

Heidi knows what he wants. She takes a deep breath and fakes a smile, then tries to imagine herself back at home, laughing with her family, as he has his way with her, his small gray eyes glistening with satisfaction and power.

**.oOXOo.**

Several weeks pass. The coldness goes away, and for that Heidi is grateful. What Heidi isn't grateful for is that her owner now watches her at night, making sure she doesn't trick him.

She can't hide anymore.

The nightmares become more and more gruesome, but when they wake her up at night, she is too exhausted to stay awake. Heidi endures.

**.oOXOo.**

As soon as the coldness has disappeared, the next sickness comes.

At first Heidi only feels a little dizzy, but then the nausea turns to full-blown sickness. She often stands up at night to throw up.

Heidi doesn't care what it is, as long as her owner doesn't know.

**.oOXOo.**

There's something about Heidi that draws people in. As long as she can remember, even when her parents were still alive, it's always been that way. Back then, she loved this little anomaly of hers. She adored the attention, the adoration it brought her. Heidi practically lived off it back then.

It was as if they were the fish and Heidi was the bait, as if they were the seamen and she was the siren, as if they were the flies and she was the spider, luring her prey into a net that had been woven for her.

Heidi was everybody's darling, and it was almost too easy.

Now that Heidi is a young woman, it brings her nothing but pain. She would give anything, her legs, her hair, even her soul for it to go away and be gone once and for all.

But like negative needs positive, like darkness requires light, like evil cannot live without good, she keeps drawing them in.

**.oOXOo.**

Heidi earns more and more each night, and her owner stops watching her. He gives Heidi more food, and Heidi grows and develops curves and other womanly features.

Her owner also gives her a new dress. It is still a bright and startling yellow, the color of whores, but it is new and covers her up to her knees, and for one moment in time, Heidi is happy.

At night, she wonders wether or not her parents would have been proud of her.

**.oOXOo.**

The following night, something terrible occurs. News travel fast, even in the poor quarters of the city, and so Heidi knows that the Romans lost a battle against the Germans with a total loss of frightening three legions only minutes after her worktime has begun. (**1**)

"But why does that mean that there will be no costumers tonight?" Heidi asks the first whore she can find.

"Because the emperor had to sack half the plebs to pay for a new army to be created and instructed," the whore answers reluctantly. "Now the plebs are too poor to pay for us, and the aristocracy has their own slaves."

Heidi breaks together on the sidewalk. She knows what this means. She will bring back no money, and her owner will get furious again and hit her. She winces at the thought, but she does not have long to wince as exactly in that moment, the sickness returns and Heidi pukes onto the street.

The other whores laugh at her, then go back inside and sleep. Heidi stays, desperate for costumers.

She needs the money, or her life will turn into hell once more.

**.oOXOo.**

The next morning, Heidi returns empty-handed. Her eyes are swollen and red from crying and she reeks of puke. She begs her owner to have mercy on her. Her owner doesn't listen.

"You whores are all the same," he says. "You work just enough to get new dresses and food, and then you get lazy again."

"Please," Heidi cries. "It wasn't my fault..."

Her owner scoffs and punches her in the face. Heidi screams, but he does not stop. Instead, he smiles and aims for her legs.

He misses. As his fist makes contact with the whore's lower abdomen, it is hard as rock. Heidi wails out in pain, but then stares at her stomach surprisedly.

The owner sighs and lifts up Heidi's dress. For the first time, Heidi sees the bulge that is forming.

"Get out," her owner says.

**.oOXOo.**

Heidi tries to sleep on the sidewalk, but it is already bright day and all her attempts fail. She does not know what to with herself. All she knows is that she is tired and hungry, but has neither a bed nor food.

In an attempt to pass time, she walks through the streets of Rome. She has not seen them since the day her parents were murdered and she was forced to take on a profession to survive. They are even more magnificent than she remembered.

But she can't bring herself to be happy. Heidi is frightened, very frightened. She has never been this scared her entire life.

Something is different. People don't turn around anymore when they see her.

**.oOXOo.**

When the night comes, she runs back to her owner's house and violently knocks at his door, again and again and again. Heidi is so incredibly hungry and tired that she feels she might faint, and her exertion is more powerful than her dignity.

She needs him, she thinks, as much as he needs her.

"Open up!" She screams. "Please!"

A voice answers from behind the door. "Are you still pregnant?"

"Yes."

"Then get away from my door."

Heidi tries to spend the night on the sidewalk, but the cries of the other whores and the hunger keep her awake. She only sleeps for a few hours.

**.oOXOo.**

When she wakes up, Heidi searches the streets until she finds half-rotten bread in an alleyway hours away from the owner's house. She gulps it down greedily, ignoring the disgusting taste.

In the night, she returns to the street the owner's house is on, trying to earn some money the way she has done for many years now. But the few men that do come take one condescending look at her and walk to the next whore.

Halfway through the night, she lies down and tries to sleep. But Heidi is too worried, and sleep will not come.

She hopes, prays that her anomaly has not disappeared forever.

**.oOXOo.**

As the weeks progress and Heidi's stomach gets larger and larger, she finds herself wishing she could resign herself to slavedom. It is what she would do if not for the unborn child that grows inside of her. From what she has heard, though, people don't normally buy slaves that are expecting children, and if they do, the slaves don't live to carry their children from exhaustion.

She also finds herself wishing she had never been giving that shiny new dress. It instantly sticks out in a croud, marking her as a whore and driving people to get away from her.

As long as she is wearing the yellow dress, Heidi cannot even be a thief. All she can be, she realizes, is a pregnant whore.

She eats food out of other people's garbage and drinks water out of the Tiber (**2**), eventhough the water is said to be carrying a bright variety of diseases. Heidi does not care. It's either this, or she is going to dehydrate.

**.oOXOo.**

One month after she is thrown out, she convinces herself that she has completely lost the ability to draw others in. Costumers barely give her a second look at night, and when they do, it's one of pure disgust.

One day while washing herself in the Tiber, she sees her own reflection in the water. She looks like a corpse with a swollen belly. Heidi barely recognizes her own face.

"It's no wonder no man would pay to sleep with me," she whispers.

**.oOXOo.**

Four months after she is thrown out, she cannot see her toes anymore and cannot move quickly. Everything hurts, and Heidi prays at night that she dies before the baby comes.

She fears that she will not survive the birth, and she feels like hunger would be a much more painless and merciful way to die, both for her and her baby.

**.oOXOo.**

Heidi's prayers are not answered.

The baby comes only two days later, when Heidi wakes up in the middle of the night from a sharp pain in her stomach. For seven long hours she experiences the worst pain she could have ever imagined. For seven long hours, the people living in the surrounding houses and whores working nearby scream at her to move and quiet down, but Heidi is in too much agony to even think about it.

When morning comes, a middle-aged man comes out of his house, slaps her across her face, and tells her to shut up.

She continues crying out in pain anyway.

By the time Heidi hears the soft wail of her baby, she can only barely keep her eyes open. She is so tired that she wants to pass out and never wake up again. She reaches out for the baby and picks it up anyway. Her bright yellow dress, Heidi notices, is soaked in dark red liquid from the waist down and reeks horribly.

The baby cries as she picks it up, and Heidi instinctively begins to hold it protectively, making gentle sounds and singing lullabies to coax it back into silence. As she feels the baby's heartbeat against her own, she is suddenly glad that both she and her baby survived its birth. Heidi's heart is flooded by a love so unconditional that her eyes begin to water, and despite the pain that she still feels and the horrid smell, she smiles.

**.oOXOo.**

It's a boy. Once Heidi is certain of that fact, she immediately knows what she will name him.

Tiberius.

They spend the night on the sidewalk. When Heidi wakes up, she takes her child and walks up to the house of the man that once owned her.

"The child is born," she says as she knocks on his door. "Please, let me in."

"Where is the child?" the man asks.

"In my arms."

The man laughs. "Who do you think I am, a nursery? Come back without the child, and I'll think about it."

The man laughs once more and steps away from the door. Heidi sits down on his doorstep, crying in despair.

Maybe she should have died before the birth, after all.

**.oOXOo.**

A few hours later, when Heidi has gone into the city to search for food, Tiberius opens his eyes.

His eyes are gray.

Heidi has never had a gray-eyed costumer. In fact, there is only one person that she knows that has them.

**.oOXOo.**

Half an hour later, she is back on her ex-owner's doorstep, knocking.

"Go away, whore!" the man screams.

"Please, I just-"

"Get lost or I swear to God, I'll kill you! I mean it!"

...wanted to bring you your grandson.

**.oOXOo.**

Heidi needs to go into town for food again, and so she does, with Tiberius on her left arm. While on her way, she feels unusually dizzy.

When she arrives, she sees black spots in her vision. She tells herself it's the hunger, but somehow, she's not even fooling herself.

**.oOXOo.**

An hour later, when she is searching a dark alleyway for food rests, she gasps from a terribly sharp pain in her lower abdomen and falls to her knees, clasping her stomach.

When she looks down, making sure that her son is unharmed, she sees that she has lost a terrifying amount of blood.

"I'm dying," she whispers in terror.

As she stares into her son's warm, loving eyes, she knows exactly what she has to do.

**.oOXOo.**

Getting more and more nauseous by the second and seeing the world only as if she saw it through a faraway tunnel, Heidi runs into the heart of the city, not stopping until she reaches a barber's shop.

"Buy my hair," she begs the barber, crying. "Please. Make a wig (**3**) from it, or a coat, I don't care, but please, I need the money, and it's all I have to sell."

The barber looks her up and down, then sighs and walks to the back of the shop. When he comes back, his hand is full of silver coins.

"I'm not buying your hair," he says. "It's too filthy, so don't be ridiculous. Now take this money before I change my mind and leave my shop, you reek."

Heidi takes the money and hugs the man. "Thank you," she smiles happily. "Thank you."

Then she runs out of the shop.

**.oOXOo.**

The shop that sells parchments is right next door. She knocks down the shop assistant as she bursts in.

"I need a piece of parchment and something to write with, quick," she says, out of breath, showing the shop assistant the coins in her hand.

The shop assistant merely laughs as he stands up. "We don't cater to your kind here," he responds arrogantly.

"Please," she begs, grunting as another sharp pain comes from her abdomen. "I... I'm dying. My son's father won't open his door. If I don't have something to leave him a message, my child will die."

"Probably shouldn't have gotten yourself pregnant out of marriage, then," he suggests. "And really, in what way is this _my_ problem?"

"Please help me," Heidi whispers.

"Leave the shop or I'll drag you out by your head, you whore."

**.oOXOo.**

Powerless and almost blind from the black that is taking over her vision, Heidi arrives at her ex-owner's house half an hour later. She gives Tiberius one last kiss, then places him infront of the door, the coins directly next to him.

"I'm dying," she croaks out weakly. "I don't know why, but that isn't important. Please, I don't want your help, but I need you to help my son." She sighs, then adds, "I know you will because he's Antonius' son. I know from the eyes. I called him Tiberius."

Heidi takes one last look at her son, who stares up at her sadly, as if he understands what is happening to her. She sighs, feeling her heart break into millions of pieces at the thought of leaving him. "Kill me if you want, but please don't let him die."

No response.

Heidi falls from the doorstep and onto the sidewalk in exhaustion. Her once yellow dress turns from brown to bright crimson at the edges from fresh blood, and her heartbeat slows.

It is in this final moment, when her mind is at ease for the first time in five months, that she draws in her savior.

**.oOXOo.**

After a seemingly infinitely long time of what Heidi has thought to be the fires of hell, her heart beats its last beat and her eyes fly open.

"Hello," a deep, female voice greets her. It belongs to a pale blond woman with startling red eyes who is sitting to her right. "My name is Hilda. Please don't be afraid."

"Where am I?" Heidi asks confusedly.

Hilda smiles. "In my home."

"Well, where is your home?"

"South-eastern Germany," she says.

"Germany?" Heidi sits up, amazed by her own speed. "But I was just in Rome..."

"So was I," Hilda replies. "That's why you're in Germany now."

**.oOXOo.**

"Drink this," Hilda says, handing Heidi a cup with dark red liquid. "It's good for you."

"What is it?"

"Blood."

Heidi stares at the cup in horror. "You can't be serious."

"You're alive," Hilda smiles. "That comes at a price. Now, drink the blood. You need it."

Heidi decides to just believe her, giving in to the unbelievably mouthwatering smell. She grabs the cup and gulps its contents down greedily, licking her lips when she is finished.

"More."

**.oOXOo.**

Heidi and Hilda stand in the middle of a forest when, all of a sudden, Heidi picks up the scent of several human heartbeats.

"Soldiers," Hilda states. "It's your lucky day. Try not to let them get away."

Heidi snarls and sprints off into the direction of her prey. They smell almost insanely good, much better than the blood in Hilda's cup, and Heidi is just about to attack when she realizes she wants to try something out.

"Help!" she calls out while she enters the camp, temporarily ignoring the fire in her throat. "I've fallen and need help! Please come help me!"

Instantly, all twenty-six soldiers stand up and run towards her.

"So it does still work," Heidi whispers to herself as she rips out each and every single one of the soldier's throats, zealously gulping down their blood.

**.oOXOo.**

"Amazing," Hilda comments as she sees Heidi walk towards her, smeared with blood. "I've never seen anything like that before. How do you do it?"

Heidi shrugs. "I already had it as a human," she says. "I just wanted to see if it still works."

**.oOXOo.**

"I want you to meet my other creations," Hilda announces when they get back to her home. "These are Mary, Victoria and Anne."

Instantly, three women with equally as pale skin and red eyes as Hilda appear before her.

"Hey," she smiles shyly. "I'm Heidi."

"Heidi?" the red-haired one repeats. "So you're from Germany, too?"

"No." Heidi says. "My parents were."

"They willingly left Germany?" the red-haired one demands. "They must suck."

Heidi instantly dislikes the red-haired one.

**.oOXOo.**

Heidi stays with Hilda for several decades, more out of gratefulness than out of enjoyment. She cannot stand the other girls. They are too shallow for their own good in her eyes, rather time bombs than vampires. Heidi knows that one day they will go off and get the coven into trouble, and when they do, she does not want to be anywhere near.

So she stays away from them.

Hilda eventually changes a roman girl named Noela to keep her company. Noela is more mature than the others, and she is very polite and nice to be around, but she was raised in an aristocratic family, and Heidi feels ashamed to talk about her youth with her.

So, eventually, she ignores her like the others.

The bomb goes off two weeks later anyway.

**.oOXOo.**

It is winter when they come, and the pitch black of their cloaks makes for a powerful contrast with the snow that is covering the forest ground.

They intruige Heidi somehow. She has never imagined that her kind could be this graceful, this poised, this elegant. That is, until they dismember her coven.

The red-haired one, Victoria, makes a run for it. Heidi thinks her foolish for doing so, but she somehow feels respect for her bravery and defiance, too.

After they dismember her creator, they offer Heidi a place within their coven. Heidi accepts. There can be no darkness without light, she later tells herself in an attempt to justify the betrayal of her coven members, and I will be the light to their darkness.

She is wrong. It is the light that cannot go without the dark, the good that cannot go without the evil, the positive that cannot go without the negative. For there is always evil, and as long as there is evil, as a consequence, there is good inspired by it. Light, contrarily to darkness, is dependent on its counterpart to exist.

Which is why, no matter where you look, you will always find light in the darkness.

The Volturi are the light in Heidi's darkness. Not the other way around.

**.oOXOo.**

When Heidi arrives in Volterra, she immediately sets up a meeting with Aro about her position in the coven.

"I don't know how you have hunted your prey in the past," she says, "but I take great pleasure in organisatory work, and I could make your prey come to you from all over the world."

Aro frowns.

"Of course," she adds, "I would ask for our victims' full identification so that I could check if any of the group members would be missed beforehand. We could minize complications that way. And if I utilize my gift correctly, they will even follow me without the slightest problems."

Aro smiles. "I already am happy to have you in my ranks, my dear. You may start within the hour."

**.oOXOo.**

Until airplanes and computers are invented, Heidi spends the majority of her immortal life running around the planet, searching for humans that would not be missed and shipping them off to Italy on an "all-expenses paid trip." She hates her job. She has never had a thing for organisatory work, and conversing with humans all day has proved to be a tiresome task.

But she keeps on doing it, and not in her wildest dreams can she imagine asking Aro for a repositioning. For how else is she supposed to find out what had happened to her beloved Tiberius if not by asking around?

This is all she can do, and she'll do it until the sun explodes in the sky if only it means that in the end, she'll know for sure wether or not Antonius had taken care of his son.

All she asked for was the clarity to put her heart at rest.

**.oOXOo.**

But there is no clarity for her, or so it seems. Maybe this is Heidi's personal version of hell, designed specifically to torture her for eternity.

She tries to mend her broken heart by beginning a relationship with Demetri. He is unfaithful and corny and Heidi often suspects he wants her only for her body, but he serves as a good distraction, and that is all she wants.

**.oOXOo.**

Maybe clarity is worse than uncertainty.

It is a cold afternoon in the November of 1586 when Aro calls for her. She has just returned from a successful journey to Norway, from where she has retrieved over fourty humans for her fellow coven members. When Heidi enters his office, he orders her to take a seat, and she instantly knows what must be the topic of conversation.

Aro tells her that a nomad has recently visited him, and in his memories, he has found the nomad by the name of Valentinus to have walked by the house of Antonius and his father in the year of 10 AD where he witnessed a little scene.

"The child's father was opening the door," Aro explains. "Antonius, I believe. He saw the child on his doorstep and picked it up. Then he stared at it for a while, looked it in the eyes. The child began to cry. Tiberius didn't like his father."

"What happened next?" Heidi asks.

Aro is silent for a moment, and deep inside, Heidi already knows what he is going to tell her.

"He..." Aro deliberately and carefully chooses his wording, as if he were on trial, "He put the child back down."

Heidi closes her eyes and takes a deep, unnessecary breath. "And... then?"

"Well, Valentinus asked Antonius why he was not taking the child. He pointed out the obvious similarities between him and the baby, but Antonius denied them. When the nomad asked the boy what he was going to do with the child, he said that... that he wasn't going to do _anything_."

Heidi gulps, wishing she could cry. She looks calm, but inside, she is falling apart. All the pain she has suppressed for the past centuries comes crawling back up, and she suddenly wonders if Marcus would be up for a double suicide pact.

"So my little boy died of hunger because his father refused to take care of him?" she asks brokenly.

Aro stays silent.

"Please tell me the truth," Heidi begs.

"How much truth can you take?" Aro responds.

"I want to know," Heidi says. "I _need_ to know. Please."

"Well, if you absolutely need to know.." the mahogany-haired vampire king replies uncomfortably, sighing.

"Valentinus showed him mercy."

Heidi screams out in pain, clutching her chest at the thought of her little baby boy being killed by some stranger vampire. She feels just like in the parchment shop all over again, desperate and pained and sorrowful and frightened and guilty and in agony, all at once.

She barely hears Aro when he concludes, "He did not suffer."

**.oOXOo.**

For several weeks, Heidi sits inanimately in her room, mute and deep in thought. She is both numb and in pain, and no-one dares to try and calm her down, not even Demetri. It is the only time since Heidi joins the Volturi that the coven members are forced to hunt for themselves again.

When she recovers, Heidi becomes a workaholic. Her relationship with Demetri shatters, but they stay friends with benefits. More and more she dives into her work, not planning to ever see the surface again, and gradually, she grows to enjoy her work. She grows to enjoy leading humans on, to enjoy seeing their faces contort in fear when they eventually see her for what she really is.

Heidi grows very close with Jane.

She sees Antonius, the shop assistant and Antonius' father in every victim she kills, and she relishes in their screams.

**.oOXOo.**

Heidi's personality changes. From the shy, fearful, reclusive girl she was when she entered the Volturi, she transforms into a bold, self-conscious, slightly sadistic woman.

Her wardrobe changes, too. The long dresses she had so longed to wear as a human grow shorter and shorter, until eventually, Heidi's signature outfit becomes a skin-tight red mini-dress paired with black stilettos.

The very essence of the Volturi —intimidation, narcism and flawless work— becomes the light to her darkness.

**.oOXOo.**

When a delegation of Volturi guards travel to Forks in the early 2000's to take of a newborn army Victoria had created, Jane brings Heidi the ashes of the vampire that had once been her coven mate. Heidi stares at the little wooden box pensively and melancholically for a short moment, then throws it into her fireplace.

"Thank you for the generous gift, Jane," she says. "I wanted to do this from the second I layed eyes on that woman."

**.oOXOo.**

Heidi, an unnaturally pale and beautiful young woman of perhaps sixteen years, stands at the edge of the street, protected by the shadows. Her curvaceous body is barely covered by the expensive piece of red clothing that is a dress. She isn't cold anymore. She never is, neither physically, nor mentally.

"Would you like to take a tour?"

* * *

**Footnotes:**

(**1**) Battle of Teutoburg Forest, 9 AD.

(**2**) The river that goes through Rome, highly unhygienic during Roman times.

**(3**) And yes, believe it or not, they had wigs in Ancient Rome.

* * *

**Author's Note**: I hope you enjoyed it! It took hours to write this, but the idea just wouldn't leave me alone and the end result isn't too bad, so I suppose it was worth it.

As you might have noticed, I changed a few aspects of Heidi's life from the way SM imagined it, namely that according to SM, she was born some time around 1530 in Germany. I hope that didn't ruin the story for you in some kind of way, but I just thought Heidi belonged into Ancient Rome rather than into Germany sometime between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Please leave behind a review! I would very much appreciate it as this story was really a piece of rather intense work. Thank you and goodbye! ~


End file.
